FAIRHOPE, Alabama -- A longstanding conflict between Mayor Tim Kant and a majority of the City Council stands to flare up tonight as the council considers a measure to decrease the pay of the mayor elected in 2012 by 50 percent.

The proposed salary change -- the pay of the next council and council president would be untouched -- comes two weeks after a Supreme Court ruling that mayors alone have the power to hire and fire municipal employees.

Council President Lonnie Mixon said Friday that it is appropriate to decrease the mayor’s pay from $60,000 annually to $30,000 because a city administrator now performs many of the mayor’s former functions.

Kant said Friday that the Supreme Court ruling did more than declare that the mayor hires and fires employees — he said the ruling affirms his position that, according to state law, "the mayor runs the city, not the council and not an employee."

The conflict has been brewing since the current council’s first meeting in 2008, when council members informed Kant that his presence was no longer required during council meetings or work sessions.

A few have tried to mediate the dispute. Ken Smith, deputy director of the Alabama League of Municipalities, met with the council in June 2009.

Smith told the council that, if they want to have a city administrator run the municipality on their behalf, a general election must be held on whether to switch to the council-administrator form of government outlined in state law. No such election was held or even discussed.

Nevertheless, the council created the city administrator position and in July 2010 hired Gregg Mims, the city planner, to do the job at an annual salary of $110,000. Mims now supervises the city’s 200 employees.

Kant said Friday that the May 27 Supreme Court decision means that it would be against state law for Mims to continue to supervise city employees rather than the mayor.

"All those ordinances they passed are going to be thrown in the trash can," Kant said. "The mayorship is much bigger than Tim Kant. The citizens of Fairhope haven’t voted to change the form of government."

Mixon said he interprets the Supreme Court ruling’s effects to be far narrower than that. He said the only ordinance relevant to the ruling is one that allows employees to appeal the mayor’s decision to fire them.

According to state law, each council must set the pay of the next elected council members at least six months prior to the next election.

According to the ordinance that will be considered tonight, council members’ pay would stay the same at $7,200 and the council president’s would also stay the same at $8,400, city officials said.

Prior to the election in 2008, the previous council made headlines by
increasing the next mayor’s salary from $16,800 to $60,000, while also raising
their own take-home pay. Kant had previously been paid $66,200 a year as
utilities superintendent. That pay was eliminated. Kant has continued to perform
the utilities job.

Before the vote, council members were paid $6,000 a year and the council
president received a salary of $6,600, according to previous reports.

Kant vetoed those raises, saying they should have been more in line with the 14 percent increase city employees had gotten over the past four years. The council later overturned the veto and the raises were enacted.

Bob Gentle, who was then council president, said the massive increase of the mayor’s pay was intended to separate the job from that of city utilities superintendent.

Seven candidates, including Gentle, ran for mayor that year. After a runoff, Kant was handily re-elected.

Officially, Kant retired from the utilities superintendent position on Oct. 1, 2008, after working for the city for 25 years. For the past four years, he has drawn about $33,000 annually in retirement pay in addition to his mayoral salary, city officials have said.